Very Good Comeback by Thorium - 88%

I liked Ocean Of Blasphemy a lot but I never listened to Unleashing the Demons and after 6 long years, Thorium are finally back. The debut was a very good mix of different blends of death metal and this new effort follows more or less the same direction, mixing the classic Swedish brutality to the American influences.

The production is far more powerful than the debut but I must admit that it is too high in the bass volumes, especially for the drums. They are really loud and metallic in their sound. The guitars are massive and really fast, alternating perfectly old school death metal passages to more melodic breaks during the solos. The influences can be found in groups like Morbid Angel and Malevolent Creation but also in “modern” acts like old Darkane and Soilwork.

The up tempo is the main word for this album and the “Epidemic Skeleton” shows the very first blast beats. The vocals are half Swedish, half American with a semi growl tonality, typical of the grooviest kind of death metal. Anyway, they are far more vicious and the music never touches modern sounds, conserving that impact a true death metal band needs.

The songs are generally quite short, so perfect to spit all the violence on our face. There is no melody concession during the fast parts and the classic tremolo picking is the most utilized technique for the guitars riffage. The few solos are heavily influences by the modern Swedish death/thrash metal with a hint of melody inside, but never too much. The fast tempo parts are in fast succession and there isn’t even a second to relax between these detonations.

Some parts in “Unbound” reminded of the sounds we can find in a recent album by Vader for the hammering sounds and the continuous bass drum devastation. The more screamed vocals are very good to break the sound a bit and I’m happy because they don’t have that horrible and annoying metalcore tonality. They are perfect for this sound. The song’s structure is quite direct and simple, pointing on the sheer impact but the riffage is always quite various and inspired.

We cannot find all the influences like in their debut anymore but we can say that finally this band has found its personal style and all the songs in this album seem more bound together by a similar genre that hides a lot of other influences inside. The point is that this time they were able to make a musically stronger effort. Recommended to any death metal fan out there.